


I didn't know we were dating

by anairim



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23732236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anairim/pseuds/anairim
Summary: Kuroo invites his new high school friends at his house to meet Kenma
Relationships: Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91





	I didn't know we were dating

Kenma has absolutely no interest to meet Kuroo’s new friends.

Not only has he left him to fight through middle school alone, but now he’s also trying to contaminate their private space with new people, with the incarnated proof that there’s a gap between them, some sort of _difference_ that ’s impossible to wipe away. They aren’t equal anymore, not like they had been three months before, when they were both in middle school.

Kuroo turned his back on him and ran to high school like he just _couldn’t wait_ to grow up. And he’s irresistible, kind, impossible to say no to. It was to be expected he’d make friends in a heartbeat.

Kenma, on the other hand, feels left behind, betrayed almost. Cause he can’t be open-hearted like him and it isn’t like his teammates are particularly fun to be around to. Especially without Kuroo to mediate between them, they have absolutely no desire to talk to him. To sum it up, he’s only happy when he can come home from school and see Kuroo’s face and _feel_ like everything’s fine and back to normal.

But _now_?

Now there are two high schoolers on the way to Kuroo’s house and they are about to ruin Kenma’s peace.

“Why do they have to come over, though?” Kenma says. He’s tapping away at a game on his phone, laying on Kuroo’s bed.

“They wanna meet you,” Kuroo answers. “Look at this,” he adds then, pointing at a pretty picture in the comic he’s reading.

“Cool,” Kenma mutters. As Kuroo gets comfortable besides him, humming with content when he sees another good picture on the following page, he asks: “What did you tell them about me?”

When you finally succeeded in making him talk, it was hard to try and get Kuroo to keep his mouth shut. It was like a switch with no _off_ option, like a _bug_ in the system.

“Nothing,” he answers. “Kenma, this artist is awesome!”

“I don’t believe you,” Kenma huffs. “You know why? Cause you’re trying to deviate from the conversation.”

“ _Deviate_.” Kuroo makes a complicated expression, crumpling up his face as if he can’t stand the sound of the word. He slides down on the bed, getting caught in his sheets and ruffling them up. “I just told them you’re the bestest, most smart person ever.”

Kenma rolls his eyes at the compliments cause Kuroo is looking up at him with puppy dog eyes. When he flatters him so much it’s usually because he feels like he has done something wrong and is trying to cover up for his mistakes.

“The truth,” he says, with an imperative gesture.

Kuroo huffs, then blurts through his teeth: “That you’re gonna be our setter next year.”

Kenma knew that was gonna be his faith. He didn’t even mind it, if it meant not being alone anymore. Before Kuroo, he hadn’t known what loneliness was. Now, he felt like it might kill him.

“Still deciding for me, I see,” he tells him, enjoying Kuroo’s quick reaction and offended gaze as he says: “No way, Kenma! I’d never.”

“You are,” Kenma snickers, poking his face with a finger. “You manipulative shit!”

“I’m not!” Kuroo squirms under his touch, laughing lightly. Really, what kind of loser gets tickles on his face? “I’m not manipulin… manila… _ma_ … I’m not controlling you!”

Right there and then, just when Kenma has finally forgot them, Kuroo’s new friends enter the room, disrupting their peace, tilting the balance of Kenma’s world.

One of them, the short one, says: “Your father told us where your room was.” He seems a little embarrassed and tries really hard not to look at them. “We knocked.”

Kenma understands why when he thinks about how Kuroo is almost laying atop of him and about how he has a forefinger sticking into Kuroo’s cheek. Kenma feels his face become hotter and pushes him away.

The other friend, the tall one, greets him, says: “Sorry to interrupt.”

Kenma doesn’t know why he’s apologising to him but he feels like he’s owned the excuses and accepts them without questionins.

Kuroo laughs then, introduces the guys to him. “Yaku and Kai,” he says. “Night and day.”

Kai chuckles politely, “I’m day.”

Yaku stares up at Kuroo with his arms crossed, looking like he should be actually taller, and scorns him: “What are you, some kind of poet?”

He has a point, Kuroo gets a little too carried away with metaphors and magnificent speeches. If Yaku had been somebody else, he would have laughed and made fun of Kuroo too. But now it seems like a stranger is bullying his best friend. It was one thing if Kenma did it, but how _dare_ he, someone he doesn’t know, get in Kuroo’s house and start to talk him down like that.

Kenma frowns at him until Kuroo brushes it off with a half-laugh and says: “This is my Kenma!”

He has a weird twinkle in his eyes as he makes that declaration, saying _my_ with a weird sort of fondness, one that feels deeper than just friendship. Kenma’s heart starts beating faster when he notices how firmly Kuroo’s hand is squeezing his shoulder, with how tender his arm feels across his shoulders.

They go downstairs, cause Kuroo wants to show them some CD recordings of volleyball matches.

 _We watched them together like one-hundred times,_ he thinks. _Why do they need to watch them too?_

He knows the recording they picked out almost by heart so it’s easy to predict moves and mistakes and to know full well how all of the sets are gonna end. Kuroo’s friends, instead, have never seen the match, so they get really invested in it. They pause the video every time they have something to say on a particular series of action on the court.

They analyse the match as Kenma analyses them.

Kuroo and Yaku tend to butt heads and, even though Yaku gives pretty accurate schemes suggestions, Kuroo often finds himself having the exact opposite opinion from him, despite the fact he knows the match by heart too.

Kai acts like a peace-maker between them. Definitely, he’s the weirdest one of the three, cause he seems the most normal one. Also, he doesn’t get how volleyball works.

“Shouldn’t they keep in the white lines?” he asks, when the libero of one of the teams makes a brilliant and difficult saving.

“Hmm, no?” Yaku tells him, incredulous. “When the ball’s in the air no.”

“So if the middle blocker touches the ball and it goes off court, it’s a point for the other team?” he asks, then.

“Yeah,” Kuroo answers him, while admiration flows down the tip of his tongue. “Really good spikers can exploit the adversaries’ block as they please.”

“Kuroo-kun, what did you say about the setter?” Kai asks, after a while. “He’s like…like..?”

“He is…” Kuroo answers, with a proud voice. “The brain of the team. Like Kenma!”

Kenma squirms on the couch, tries to sink inside it to hide his flattered expression. Kuroo had told him that thing a long time ago, when he was still trying to get Kenma to like volleyball too and to play with him. It was nothing new, but still, it was embarrassing how happy it made him to just _hear it_ while Kuroo’s friends were around and while they weren’t paying attention to him in the slightest.

Still, Kuroo is always so over the top.

Setters have a cool role, that’s true, but they aren’t all.

“Without a good teamwork they’re nothing,” he says. He’s the only one sitting on the sofa so, when they all turn heads from the floor to stare at him, he gets shy pretty fast. “If the team doesn’t cooperate, even a genius setter can become mediocre.”

“Sounds fair,” Kai smiles.

“I told you he was the best!” Kuroo gloates like a child who got a better Christmas present than his other tiny, less fortunate friends.

“Wow, so passionate!” Yaku gives him a thumbs up, then goes back to stare at the TV.

They’re not that bad, after all. Kenma gets used to them pretty fast, mainly because they ignore him and it’s clear they aren’t trying to steal Kuroo from him. So he relaxes.

Kuroo puts a second recording in, then gets up and says: “I’ll make popcorns!”

Kenma kinda wants to go with him, but also kinda doesn’t remember this match well and wants to watch it more carefully. So he only shifts on the sofa as much as to hug his knees and stays silent, hoping Kuroo comes back before he has to talk with one of these strangers. Of course, he’s never lucky.

“So,” Yaku says, at one point, throwing a quick glance at him. “How long have you and Kuroo been together?”

That’s really a weird way to put the sentence if he wants to know since when him and Kuroo have known each other. But Kenma hasn’t got the heart to make him notice. And he doesn’t want to speak to him, so he just hopes his questions are gonna stop there.

“Since I was seven,” he says.

Yaku frowns. “What?” He looks at Kai, who seems surprised too, but is trying to hide it in order to be nice. They watch Kenma as if to decide if he’s telling the truth or not. He doesn’t understand what the matter is about.

“You’ve been dating for that long?” Yaku prods, open-mouthed. “Since you were _that_ young?”

Kenma gasps at the accusation, tries to escape Yaku’s piercing eyes. What does he mean dating? Is he crazy?

“W-we’re not dating,” Kenma tells him.

“Kuroo told me you were,” Yaku points at Kuroo who’s entering the room, bringing an almost overflowing bowl of popcorns. He stops dead at the end of Yaku’s finger.

“We’re not?” Kuroo asks, cheeks glowing with embarrassment.

Kenma stares him down, studies him attentively and decides he doesn’t want to put him under this humiliation, so he laughs a little and treats it as a joke.

“Come on, you didn’t fool them,” he says.

And then, slowly, they all go back to behave as before. Even if Kuroo doesn’t talk anymore and doesn’t eat a lot, they manage to get to the end of the match without mentioning the dating.

Kuroo’s friends go away not saying a word about it and if they do remember it doesn’t show.

When they are alone, again in Kuroo’s room, Kenma says: “You told them what?”

Kuroo says, accusing him in the same tone of voice: “I thought we were!”

“Why didn’t you tell me we were?” Kenma feels ridiculous, but the entire situation is. “What made you _think_ we were?”

“Cause we hug a lot and share beds all the time.” Kuroo gets shy and starts to mumble as when he was a small kid and didn’t really like to look at people in the eyes when he was talking to them. “And we’re always together. I thought you might like me very much. _I_ sure do.”

The confession makes Kenma shut up on the spot. He’s kind of angry at Kuroo, for not letting him know they were dating. But he’s also kind of relieved.

Between them, there was never a need for words. They were always coming to one another, getting closer and tied together. Kenma couldn't imagine life without him. That’s why he feels like he’s hit _pause_ since Kuroo went to high school. He’s waiting to get there too, so they can push _play_ together and see how far it gets them.

“You’re always deciding for me,” he scoffs, playfully. “When we get married tell me before hand.”


End file.
